News release: Groups stand together in support of robust charter-school policy
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Contact: Martin Cothran @ 859.329.1919, Jim Waters @ 270.320.4376 (FRANKFORT, Ky.) — The Family Foundation of…
Bluegrass Beacon: Set the table for a school-choice buffet
President Donald Trump’s administration is taking some cues from the productive Kentucky Legislature. After a frenetic first week of the 2017 session of the Kentucky General Assembly during which seven bills were passed, the new Trump administration offered a proportional amount of accomplishment during its first five days in the White House. Trump took 15…
Bluegrass Policy Brief — Charter Schools versus Magnet Schools: The differences are significant
By Richard G. Innes, Staff Education Analyst As lawmakers prepare to resume the 2017 session of the Kentucky General Assembly after already passing historic labor reforms, pension transparency requirements and pro-life bills this year, their attention now turns to education policy and a vigorous debate about making Kentucky the 44th state to allow charter schools.…
Bluegrass Beacon: Why such hostility toward a promising policy?
The Elizabethtown Independent School Board recently became the first local education oversight body in Kentucky to express collective hostility toward giving parents the option of a different type of public -school experience for their children. It passed a resolution claiming a charter-school policy “unilaterally takes critically needed funds from local school districts and redirects them…
Bluegrass Beacon: Provide multiple paths for charter-school creations
School-choice opponents in my Twitter domain are having 140-character conniption fits over President-elect Donald J. Trump’s stellar decision to choose Michigan philanthropist Betsy DeVos as the nation’s next education secretary. They claim their opposition is because DeVos doesn’t have “classroom teacher” on her resume. Yet what’s really at the heart of the pushback from DeVos’…
Bluegrass Beacon: Clinton’s backflip on charter schools ‘a step backwards’
Hillary Clinton supported charter schools before being endorsed by the big teachers’ unions and receiving access to their cash and get-out-the-vote efforts. Clinton wrote in her memoir “It Takes a Village” that she favors “promoting choice among public schools,” while later claiming “charter schools are a way of bringing teachers and parents and communities together.”…
BIPPS op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader: ACT scores reinforce need for charter schools
Bluegrass Institute staff education analyst Richard Innes’ analysis in Thursday’s Lexington Herald-Leader of the latest ACT college-entrance test results released this week includes disaggregating the scores, which reconfirms both the seriousness of Kentucky’s white minus black achievement gap and the need for charter schools in the Bluegrass State, one of seven states without a…
There’s still time to register! Remembering Friedman was never this much fun!
Each year, the Bluegrass Institute celebrates the life and legacy of the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman around the anniversary of his birth, which occurred on July 31, 1912. While Friedman won the Nobel Prize for his economic theory, he also was a great champion of school choice – a cause for which he dedicated…